Blood Song
by 1Scarylady
Summary: Written as a gift for the 300th reviewer of Trouble & Strife, using the reviewer's warden  at her request .  She asked for something dark, a little rough, and not completely consensual, with Alistair in the lead.   COMPLETE


**_This was written for the lovely Seredine, who was my 300th reviewer on Trouble & Strife. It is with her permission that I'm posting a story containing her Warden, Nyra, about whome one may read more in Seredine's fine story, Telling the Tale. This is, of course, an AU, as I have no right at all to be carving out the future of another writer's character._**

_-oOo-_

They bought an awful lot of extra years with Avernus' potion, but it couldn't last forever. There had never been any doubt that they would go to the Deep Roads together; when the first dark stains began to appear on Nyra's skin they waited, watching for the tell-tale signs to surface on Alistair also. For months they delayed, while the taint crawled further across her skin.

Alistair remained unblemished, his dreams ordinary.

It was an agony for Nyra, knowing perfectly well that he wouldn't allow her to go without him, knowing that she couldn't _bear_ to go without him. Time was running out, they may already have delayed too long. Not for them the convenience of a quick trip down into the tunnels below Vigil's Keep; the Paragon must be seen into the Deep Roads with all honour, and that meant making the long journey from the Vigil to Orzammar.

Leaving her Wardens didn't hurt half as much as she had expected. She realised now why it was named The Calling. The taint running through her blood was insistent, pulling her forward, closing the doors on her old life. Only the presence of Alistair, ever at her side, anchored her to the world. The beat of his heart against her ear, while they slept, couldn't keep the nightmares at bay, but it reminded her who she was, once she awoke.

That reminder was needed more and more until, one morning in the Frostbacks, less than a day's travel from Orzammar, when she woke and for a single moment had no sense of identity at all; not who she was, nor who the human beside her was, nor even the name of the canvas structure in which she lay. Once the moment passed, and she was herself again, cold fear closed around her heart; they had left it too late, she was in serious danger of turning into a ghoul while under the gaze of the gathered Houses of Orzammar.

She didn't tell Alistair. She _couldn't_.

_-oOo-_

The statue of Nyra was, in Alistair's opinion, a bit… triangular. It reminded him of a child's drawing of a girl, whose skirt was depicted as three strokes of the pencil, with stick legs poking out of the horizontal edge. All the statues of the Paragons were much the same; in fact, Branka was positively pyramidal. _All Oghren's risqué comments about 'climbing aboard' make sense in view of his wife's body_, thought Alistair, and choked down an inappropriate giggle as the Shaper of Memories droned on about the remarkable achievements of the last of the Aeducan bloodline.

It felt good to have that bubble of laughter welling up, even as he felt a twinge of guilt. There hadn't been much to laugh about recently. He didn't have to turn his head to be aware of the dark, scaly marks peeping above the neckline of his beloved's armour. He didn't need to look, in order to be aware of her position at any time of the day or night; his blood was screaming that there was a darkspawn in the room, even now.

They needed to get on with this and fast; Nyra would be mortified if all of Orzammar saw… _that._ He wondered if she realised just how fine they were cutting it.

_Maker damn it, _why_ didn't the Calling come for me, too? We should have been here weeks ago._

From the Hall of Heroes, they passed in solemn, yet joyful, procession through the Commons, every noble house in Orzammar adding troops to the unwieldy size of their escort. Every House wished it to be recorded that they had been part of this occasion: the final walk of a Paragon, her voluntary return to the Stone. Orzammar knew that the Wardens took the Calling, but on this occasion they chose to ignore it, focussing instead on the fact that a living Ancestor was in their midst for the final time, before rejoining those of her clan who had gone before.

_Yeah, right, 'cos we're _really_ looking forward to meeting Bhelen again…_

The pomp and pageantry continued once they reached the Great Seal, the last bastion of dwarven technology holding back the tides of darkspawn who had threatened to wipe out their race. Nyra was in full Aeducan-mode, a fascinated smile pasted across her face as everyone in Orzammar – or, at least it appeared that way to Alistair - made a speech.

_Come on… Come on…_ It took enormous effort not to gaze anxiously at her while the speeches ground on; it was a trial not to search her face for tell-tale signs of lost identity. Instead, Alistair focussed inwards, telling himself that he would know if she was gone, the itch in his blood would alter if she took that final step. He shifted his shoulders, the armour sitting easily on them after all these years. The sword on his back was a comforting weight.

_Merciful Andraste, please don't make me cut down my love in cold blood before her kinfolk_. _I don't know if I can do it, even though I know she would wish me to._

It was a relief when the dwarven voices finally ground to silence, when they could stand before the open Seal, the cold, still, tainted air of the Deep Roads before them and the strange, intense, lava-heat of Orzammar at their backs. They turned for a final time, raising their weapons to the assembled crowd, allowing the cheers to wash over them. As they swung around to face the Seal their eyes caught and Alistair saw the intense relief in Nyra's eyes.

_She knows then. _

As the Great Seal slowly closed behind them, as the forge-heat of the dwarven city was blotted out, leaving them shivering in the sudden chill, Alistair gripped her fingers.

"It's over," he murmured, "I have you safe now. Just you and me."

Her fingers tightened on his. "Just you and me."

_-oOo-_

_We miscalculated worse than I thought_.

Alistair sliced at a darkspawn's head, stunning it, and leaving Nyra's knives to do the rest. His attention was already on the next, using his shield to put it on the ground, confident that the first one was dead, even if it didn't know it yet.

And therein lay the problem. They were too good, had been doing this too long and too efficiently. They couldn't, _couldn't _just roll over and die. Nyra's face was a mask, the scaly bruising sweeping up from her throat to grasp her jaw, creeping from her temples to surround her eyes. He wasn't sure how many days it had been, three or four if their rations were any indication. Every time they made an area safe and curled up to rest, he feared what he would wake to. Every time they plunged into another battle he hoped she would fall, so that he could finally give up the fight.

Every day the clarion call in his blood grew clearer, warning him of what walked at his side.

Nyra wiped her weapons on the corpse of the final darkspawn to fall, sheathed them, and sagged against the wall, the slump of her shoulders demonstrating her weariness. But it was the fear in her eyes that was unmanning him, fear that he understood all too well. They needed to find a bigger, stronger band, one that could take down two well-armed Wardens with skills honed to perfection. The greatest mercy they could hope for now was to fall under a wave of 'spawn so vast that there could be no error, no possibility of survival.

"You should leave me."

The bald words were the first she'd spoken all day, and for a moment he couldn't even take in what their meaning was. Her voice was so beautiful, the last untainted thing she possessed, and Alistair was caught up in savouring it, like a fine wine. Then, her words penetrated, and his head snapped up.

"_What?_"

Her eyes burned into his, fevered with purpose for the first time in days. "Leave me or kill me, Alistair. _Please_. I-" She swallowed hard, her throat working under the shadowy skin. "I didn't realise it would be like this. I thought I'd be dead before now. It's gone too far, it's taking too long." She shifted her weight against the wall, her eyes dropping away from his with a shame that brought fury boiling up inside him. "I can't bear for you to see me like this anymore."

"You-" Words failed him.

_She doesn't want me to see her like this?_ Didn't she understand that there was nothing, _nothing, _in the whole world he'd rather look at than her? If she'd been dropped in a lava pit and fished out without skin or hair, he'd _still_ rather look at her than any other living being. For a moment he fought the rage, battled against the fury that joined with his alarmed blood, rampaging against the woman, the beautiful, beloved, alien _creature_ who stood before him, defeated in a way he'd never seen her. He tried to remind himself of how he'd feel if their roles were reversed, how he'd have begged her to remain behind, to return to life and light. He understood some of what drove her, but this… To believe that he cared what she looked like, what she was becoming, in any kind of aesthetic sense was… It was…

_Fuck it. _

It was the first time he'd touched her, really touched her, in days. They had slept wrapped together, had pressed their foreheads together on waking, had touched fingers while they ate or rested. But not like this. Not fiercely, his fingers in her hair, his body pressing her to the cold wall. Not passionately, the scales on her lips burning beneath his. For a moment she melted against him, just as she always had, and then she was struggling, fighting to be free.

"Alistair, no, I _can't_… you can't _want_ to…" She twisted her head to the side, avoiding his lips and he responded by pressing them to the thicker scale below her ear.

"Shut up, Nyra."

Armour was a definite problem, but it wasn't as though they'd never done this before. It was tougher to hoist her one-handed, her leathers scraping on stone, when she was fighting him. It was tricky to hold her there, even with her legs wrapped around his waist for necessary support, in sharp contradiction to the message of her pushing hands and squirming torso. Alistair had been wearing armour all his life; the fingers of his free hand snapped clasps and tugged open straps almost without thought, while his mouth traced a line over her ear, trying to coax her back to face him. Tassets and faulds clattered to the ground, startling in the silent tunnels. He reached under the fringe of leather strips that protected her thighs, finding the thongs that held in place her hardened leather groin covering. This, together with the smalls underneath, was ripped away, joining his codpiece on the floor of the cavern.

Nyra was shaking her head in denial, a near-silent litany of _no, no, no_ forming on her lips, even as her arms slipped around his shoulders, fingers tangling in the hair at his nape. It was fortunate that she did not seem entirely adverse to the idea, as Alistair didn't think he could have stopped now, even if he'd tried. The repetitive denial was ended by his mouth closing over hers, his tongue dominating her mouth, forcing her to face him, to accept him.

Only once she opened to him, submitted to him, did he relent; dusting butterfly kisses over a face that no amount of blemishes could render ugly in his eyes.

"You're still mine. Always mine." His voice sounded rough, even to his own ears, made harsh by the grief that had been bubbling under the surface for days. Desire battled for prominence and won; Maker, it had been too long. With her arms now securely wound around his neck, and her legs gripping his hips, slipping into position was easy and familiar, the heat of her sex a torment against the tip of his cock. Even here the skin felt a little... odd, not scaly, Maker, no, nothing so terrible, but... not quite as it should be. And so, when he pushed inside her his groan was equal parts lust and loss.

_This was the last- _

_Never again would they-_

Alistair couldn't be gentle, not with such thoughts in his mind. Fury at the world for taking her away from him bled through into his movements, driving the pace. Nyra seemed of a mind; she peppered frantic kisses over his throat and chin, whispering words of belonging, while he crushed her between his body and the wall. To be within her felt so good, but more than that he could feel her burning in his blood. Senses heightened to the max by searing arousal, love and anger felt her presence in his own tainted blood, felt her soul blended with his own and in that moment he could sense her shining spirit as a separate thing from the tainted creature her body was becoming.

_Nyra._

_My love_

_My only._

The words were breaking from him in a babble, her own sounds devolving into a meaningless cry of passion as she clenched around him. He clung to her, cherishing the closeness even as his own body pressed him forward, pushing for a completion that he both longed for and dreaded.

_Never want it to end, never want_-

In the exultant moment of his orgasm, he felt her presence flare around him, a cocoon of love and joy that washed over him before vanishing. Her head, buried in his shoulder, went limp for a moment, and then gained a new, and unpleasant, rigidity.

She'd gone, extinguished like the brightest flame, and his blood was singing an ugly song. Alistair thought he'd break into a million pieces, his grief a wail so great that he could express nothing. The thing in his arms wasn't Nyra, but it was_, it was_, it was the right shape and the right smell and-

He couldn't delay, couldn't let ... _it_... defile her through its actions. While new, mindless tracks of instinct attempted to get sluggish flesh to move, he reached behind her, still cradling her in one arm, and grasped the hilt of one of her own daggers where it poked above her shoulder.

It sliced easily through the tender throat, even given the coating of scale. The warm blood that washed over him mattered not at all. The final convulsions of the body in his arms were soothed by his last embrace. None of it could touch him now; nothing could exceed the loss he felt.

_-oOo-_

Time passed, he had no idea how much. It was his Warden's blood that drew him back to the world, to find that he was lying on the cold floor of a filthy cavern, caked in blood and curled protectively around...

But the song in his blood was deafeningly loud: a troop of 'spawn, and close. A blood-encrusted dagger was still clenched in his fist; he looked at it curiously, vaguely wondering why he held such a small weapon. A longsword was what he'd need against the darkspawn. He dropped the little knife, reaching back to draw a more familiar weapon from his scabbard and paused, the dim light of a small lava flow catching on something unusual.

Finally, belatedly, dark shiny scale adorned the back of his hand.

The pack of 'spawn singing in his blood wasn't small. It was the group they'd been hoping for, sizeable enough to take them down. With this aching void, a space in the world where his fighting partner should be, there would be no difficulty.

It was time to go.


End file.
